Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Downsizing the public payroll
By Kevin OBrien
Thursday, August 18, 2011 

Let’s say a group of Americans worked for an employer that was badly overextended. 

Because of awful management over a period of many years, the employer is having to borrow money just to make payroll. Signs of impending doom don’t get much clearer than that. 

To make matters worse, the accounts payable book is downright apocalyptic, with fabulous sums owed to creditors and clients. Meanwhile, the popularity of the product line has diminished. 

Obviously, the employer is going to have to make some big adjustments. Restructuring or reducing liabilities comes to mind. Revamping the product and downsizing the staff are obvious answers. Breaking the news to the employees won’t be easy, but it’s clearer every day that there’s just no way to go on like this. 

Oh, by the way, we’re talking about an outfit run by politicians and staffed with 7.6 million unionized employees. That’s government, at all levels. 

I just made the problems a lot harder to solve, didn’t I? 

Government, as an employer, can insulate itself from economic ups and downs, but it is not immune to them -- a fact with which the public is just beginning to come to terms. 

Like any other employment sector, the government sector should expand or contract as needs and willingness to pay change among consumers (in this case, taxpayers). Our federal government, especially, has not been willing to contract. Instead, it has borrowed in order to keep expanding. The consequences of that have been delayed repeatedly, in hopes that the economy would recover sufficiently to let a government in hock up to its eyeballs keep living the lie that all is well. 

But alas, there has been no recovery. The one we’ve been hearing about for a couple of years now has been an illusion fueled by hope and hype. The federal government simply has not been able to print enough money to prime a broken pump. Wrong again, Mr. Keynes. 

Now, the effects of that failure and decades of wanton spending are being felt on down the line. Ohio started getting acquainted with reality when the “stimulus” money on which Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland had balanced his budget ran out. Local governments are getting a dose now that Republican Gov. John Kasich has turned down the cash spigot. 

It’s going to get worse. 

And to hear President Barack Obama actually blame the failure of his administration’s boneheaded economic policies on a run of bad luck in Japan and on the Arab Street would be comical if it weren’t so blatantly contemptuous of the intelligence of the American people. 

But while we’re not letting him kid us, let’s not kid ourselves, either: Even if the U.S. economy were flying along at 5 percent GDP growth, the federal government’s long-term liabilities and its seizure of the health care system would soon combine with inexorable demographics -- worsened by federal sloth regarding immigration law enforcement -- to guarantee an entitlement-driven flameout. 

And notwithstanding Warren Buffett’s musings, there is no way to tax the problem away. 

For the entire lifetimes of almost all Americans now living, government has had literally more money than it has known what to do with. Government has not had to reference the public on many issues of spending, because there was enough to satisfy all or most of the organized interests. 

Now, the public must get back to setting priorities. Its various governments are no longer able to pay for everything anyone wants. 

That brings us back to those 7.6 million unionized government employees. 

It is truly unfortunate that so many people across this nation depend for their livelihoods on an employer that is ridiculously overextended. 

No one hates them for that. No one is blaming them for the fiscal shortfall that afflicts every level of government. They aren’t the policymakers; they’re just the people who bought into the supposition that government employment would always be a safe harbor, even in economic storms. That supposition has turned out to be false. 

Today, Ohioans are debating whether to repeal Senate Bill 5, a law that would begin making necessary adjustments in how the state and its localities manage the public payroll. 

Public employee unions, lacking any argument rooted in fiscal sanity, are trying to make this about “hatred.” 

Ohioans shouldn’t fall for that. We all know plenty of people who are at risk of losing their jobs in the inevitable downsizing of government. They’re friends and neighbors, and we don’t begrudge any of them a living. We just can’t pay all of them to work for us anymore. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer